Commentaria in Isaiam
“I have seen,” he says, “with my eyes.” So with bodily eyes Moses saw the glory of the Lord, as I said on Exodus 33:22, and St. Pachomius, as is plain from his Life. But the contrary is truer, namely that this form was presented to the imagination, as St. Augustine holds in his book Against Adimantus, chap. 28, or rather to the mind of Isaias. First, because it was most sublime; second, because it is not likely that he heard with bodily ears the voice of God and the clamour of the Angels, nor saw in heaven a temple, wings, coals, and that the mouth of Isaias was really burnt by them; third, because as Isaias saw Seraphim, so Ezechiel, chapter 1, saw Cherubim: and that vision was partly imaginary, partly intellectual: therefore this too was such; fourth, this will be plainer from Question 4. See what was said in the Preface, Question 2.
You will ask fourth, whether he saw God only, or also the three persons in him? Alcazar, on Apocalypse the others also were present concomitantly; indeed they confess the very same, both because all are joined in the divine essence, which they have one and the same: and because one person is in another by perichoresis, or circuminsession; and because the works of God outward, of which kind is an apparition, are common to the whole Holy Trinity. So St. Ambrose teaches expressly, book 3 On the Holy Spirit, chap. 23; indeed all the rest confess that the Seraphim here cried three times “Holy,” because they acclaimed it to the Holy Trinity. Hence Procopius: “The Seraphim,” he says, “who say Lord of Sabaoth, place the Trinity in the one nature of the divinity.” See Damascene On the Trisagion. But I say that the three persons of the Holy Trinity appeared here to Isaias, not by concomitance, but of themselves directly and expressly; and therefore I say with Toletus on John 12, and Maldonatus there, that this image represented not only the unity of essence but also the three persons, in a certain divine and ineffable way: as if someone were to see the word of the mind of the Blessed, he would see in it abstractively God one and three; and therefore the vision of Isaias was more excellent than that of Abraham, who with his eyes saw three, but with his mind adored one. It is proved first: for that the Son appeared here is clearly said in John 12:41; the same of the Holy Spirit is plain from Acts 28:25 joined with this place of Isaias: for there St. Luke says that the Holy Spirit spoke these words which are here had, verses 9 and 10, by Isaias: but, as is said here, Isaias saw him who said these words, sitting on the throne: therefore he saw the Holy Spirit. Of the Father all the Fathers teach, whom see in Damascene, treatise On the Trisagion: nor can there be any doubt. Second, because, as on account of the unity of essence the Seraphim cried once only: “Lord God of Sabaoth,” so on account of the three persons they cried three times “Holy” to the same one sitting on the throne, as teaches Epistle 4 of the Decretals, St. Dionysius, chap. 7 of the Celestial Hierarchy, and others soon to be cited; and it is the common sense of the Fathers and the Church, as Leo Castrius testifies. Hence therefore is plain the true divinity of the Son of God and of the Holy Spirit, against the Arians and Macedonians. By this argument Cardinal Bellarmine convinced the Arian Palaeologus: “He whom Isaias saw was true God, as is plain, and the Arians admit; but Isaias saw the Son of God, as is plain from John chapter 12, verse 41; therefore the Son is true God.”
Third, because grave Theologians teach that God can create and infuse into someone a species which represents the divine essence and the three persons: which species, if anyone by perfectly understanding it should comprehend, he would know the divine essence quidditatively, and by its proper concept, not intuitively but abstractively. For if there is given an expressed species of God, namely the word of the mind of the Blessed, why could not an impressed species of God, infused by God, be given? Therefore such a species or image could be given to Isaias, and that it was given, what has now been said concludes. Some bring a likeness, namely that Isaias saw one God in three persons, as the Poets feign Geryon to have been three-bodied. But this likeness is unlike in this, that the deity is not in three persons as the soul of Geryon is feigned to have been in three bodies: for these three bodies each had its own essence distinct from the essence of the others: but the divine persons all have one and the same essence in number. Hence the image would be more similar if one soul be posited in the same body thrice folded as it were; for God was seen here as a man and king sitting on a throne: as in the parhelion three suns appear, from the rays of the sun reflected in a cloud, which three suns are in truth only one sun: just as in a mirror the countenance of a man appearing, and again reflected in another mirror, is not another, but the same and one with the very countenance of the man.
God has a thousand other ways of representing the Holy Trinity, which we do not know, and he could have used them here.
Fourth, because the ancient Rabbis so explain it, as R. Simeon son of Jochai: Holy, he says, is the Father; holy is the Son; holy is the Holy Spirit, as Galatinus witnesses, book 1, chap. 5; and he adds that they ordained that at least twice a day, namely at sunrise and sunset, these words of Isaias, or rather of the Seraphim, as well as those of Moses, Deuteronomy 6:4, according to the text: “Hear, O Israel, the Lord, the Lord our God, the Lord is one,” should be recited by every Jew, among whom daily they are recited, which he asserts persisted among them down to his own times: namely that thus they might profess the trinity of persons with the unity of the divine essence. For the name God repeated three times in Deuteronomy, just as holy in Isaias, signifies three persons. And the word “our” added in the second place signifies that the Word assumed our flesh, and that Emmanuel was given to us and born for us; for which reason David also said, Psalm 66:7: “May God, our God, bless us, may God bless us.” Genebrard also cites at the end of book 1 of his Chronology the ancient Rabbi R. Ibba, who says that these three kados, that is, holy, are elsewhere called three mirrors, three lights, three supreme fathers without beginning and end; elsewhere they are called crown, wisdom and understanding; elsewhere they designate three Jehovahs, that is three divine persons.
Upon a throne high and elevated.—This throne was like the propitiatory of the temple, supported by two Cherubim, Exodus 25. For it was in the temple, as I shall now say. This throne is called “high” in respect of the earth on which Isaias stood: for he saw this throne in the lofty heaven: it is called “elevated” because it appeared lofty in heaven itself, and raised above the pavement. This throne is that of God the judge, and therefore signifies that the sentence of God against the Jews, of their blinding and rejection, has been determined. Symbolically some take by the lofty throne the throne of the Church and of the Roman Pontiff, in which God sits and presides. Hence for “high” the Hebrew is ram: whence Roma, that is, height, as St. Jerome witnesses, book 2 Against Jovinian.
And his train (Symmachus and Theodoret translate, what was under his feet) filled the temple.—Hence it is plain that Isaias saw not only God, but also the temple, namely God dwelling in a magnificent and glorious temple. Some think, as our Prado in the first vision of God of Ezechiel, section 5, that this temple was the temple of Solomon, as though Isaias saw God sitting in it, as the Pontiff entering the Holy of Holies heard the voice of God sitting in the propitiatory. But because this was a sublime and divine vision, and because Isaias says that he saw God upon a high and elevated throne; and again that he saw and heard heavenly spirits, namely Seraphim, crying: “Holy, holy, holy,” it is therefore truer that he saw this temple not in Judea, nor on earth, but in heaven, as St. John also saw, Apocalypse 7:3. In heaven, therefore, he saw this august temple, which was nevertheless like the temple of Jerusalem; whence he saw in it an altar and a throne of God like the propitiatory, and Seraphim like Cherubim.
Note: For “what was under him” the Hebrew is shulaiv, that is, the fringes, or hems of garments, as if to say: The robe and royal garment, or mantle, of God was so long, broad and flowing that its fringes and hems filled the temple, in the way that kings and queens, as well as Cardinals, have very long trains which are lifted and held up by attendants. The Septuagint and the Chaldee call these fringes glory: because they were august and glorious. Hence they translate, and the house was full of his glory: which has crept into some copies of the Latin version. Hence also the Church has joined both versions in the responsory of the first Sunday of November, saying: “All the earth was full of his majesty: and his train filled the temple.” R. David thinks that these fringes were not of God’s garments, but of the coverlets with which his royal throne was spread; but shulaiv signifies the fringes of garments rather than of a throne. Literally these fringes were symbols, and signified the immense power, majesty and glory (as the Septuagint and the Chaldee translate) of the divinity in itself, but hidden and veiled from us, yet revealed by faith in a riddle, to be known obscurely and slenderly by men, even by Isaias and the Prophets. Mystically, these fringes and garments signify the humanity of Christ, which is as it were the fringe of the divinity of Christ. That is, the outermost and lowest garment of the Word, or Son of God, with the glory of whose doctrine, Gospel, miracles, Sacraments, grace and gifts the whole temple, that is the whole Church, is filled.